Mama to five frozen teens.
Married to the Mister.
Writing - Meditating - Reading - Senior Dog Doting - Sober Living - are my jam.
Life is good.

Wednesday, December 01, 2010

Now This is My Kind of Problem

Every Tuesday night, Essie the Accidental Mommy (yes, I am totally flaunting this here. I know I could just as easily write "I knit with 2 friends." I know that you are jealous. But if you were knitting with Essie, you would brag about it too) and Angie (who we are going to get onto the Blogging Side if it's the last thing we do, so that way you can see how awesome she is and then be jealous that I'm flaunting the fact that I knit with her, too) and I meet to knit.

When we knit, we look like this:

(Angie, Essie, Sarah)

Awwww. . .

Kidding! I bet I just about made Essie wet herself, except that it's not allowed at her house.

Actually, when we knit, we're all like this:Because, as fate would have it, we each encounter a variety of idiots each and every week who should be thankful that we do knit. Sometimes this group includes our spouses and children.

We used to meet at a small vegetarian/indy cafe. They had a big comfy couch (score!) and we could knit with a glass of wine (touchdown!) But they shortened their evening hours until 9 pm.

I don't know how you and your friends roll, but our Knitting Crew is not down with a 9 pm closing time.

Being the hard-partying rebels that we are, we had to find a location better suited to our night owl tendencies. So we switched to Barnes and Noble.

They close at 10 pm. And we shut that mutha down each and every time.

Whoa. Life on the edge, I know.

Anyway, last night dear Angie was totally kicking butt on this awesome scarf she is knitting. Bear with the technicalities here. She had just bound off (or is it appropriate to use the term "binded," since we are discussing knitting?) to create the keyhole, and she needed to cast stitches back on to resume the scarf.

Angie is a lefty. Essie and I are righties. Between the three of us, our awesome math skills, and left/right/forward/backward miscalculations, we kind of created a huge knitting mess for poor Angie.

All the while, over the loudspeaker, Barnes & Noble was counting down every 5 minutes that they close at 10 pm--lest any of us should forget the time since their last reminder 5 minutes ago.

Now, we are moms whose children constantly present us with problems of the WTF!?! variety. When we are presented with a problem that we actually can fix, you know what happens?

We rally.

And rallied we did. We consulted a guide. We talked it out. We completely ignored the B&N "we're closing in 5 minutes" countdown.

Suddenly they were shutting off the cafe lights and the manager came over to ask us to leave. Clearly he was missing our sign:

I was standing up, knitting frantically as Angie informs him that we have a Knitting Emergency.

Essie scoffs under her breath, "They can call the police and drag us out. We're fixing this problem."

Secretly, I think we were all envisioning us having a stand-off with the po-po, us holding our deadly weapons--knitting needles. We weren't scared. They could bring it.

We were Knitting Ninja's, I tell you.

We fixed that problem, packed up our gear and were on our way. We thanked the exhausted manager for his patience and understanding and assured him that this was truly a dire knitting emergency.

"I don't even want to know," he replied.

Leaving the store, we were on a "We fixed a problem" high.

And that's something we don't experience a lot. So when we do, we savor it. It was a great moment.

8 comments:

Green is not a good color on me and right now I am green with jealousy. No friggin' fair. I want to play with you guys too. Why don't you guys road trip out here and bring your knitting needles. I don't knit but I make a mean mutha of a drink!!

I learned how to knit once...sort of. A really nice lady at a local shop that has since closed :( started something for me, then I would knit a scarf and go back to the store for her to finish it off. I did this for a bunch of people one year for Christmas. I don't remember how to knit though and I'm really sad. Also...what about the wine??? There has to be a place that closes later than 9:00 AND has a comfy couch and wine, right???

Also...how does everyone know how to knit? Did your mothers teach you? Curses...I was raised by a city girl and a farm boy. I assure you, if it had been the other way around, I wouldn't have had to learn how to "can" via the internet and make homemade pie crust (this year only) from Martha Stewart. My dad did teach me how to garden though, so I'm not a total loss.

Beck

P.S. I just ordered some new knitting needles (because they were cute...wtf?) and some really pretty fuzzy yarn. Can you be my starter/stopper?

The 5FC Crew

About Me

5 kids, 2 dogs, 3 cats, and I'll pass on the partridge in the pear tree for now, thanks (although I'd take a pear tree.) We survived our 30 month long Haitian adoption process, and now I just try to live life in the moment, whether it's homeschooling, cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, refereeing, bandaging ouchies, giving hugs, vacuuming, doling out kisses, picking up play-dough, or attempting to keep up on the blog. My Mister is a legalized drug pusher, saving the local population from the horrors of herpes and prostrate problems. We put up with the burbs for now, but would one day like to live in the country, where I can raise alpacas, the girls can train dogs, our boys can be boys, and Mr. C. can work on project cars (waaayy out of sight in the far back of the yard) to his heart's content!